Monday 23rd April

Monday was again sunny but windy. Today we had three boats between eight anglers.

Harry, Tom and Dave fished with Damon. It's Harry's dream to catch a Tarpon, Permit and Sailfish all on the same day so they had an early start and left at 7 a.m. There seems to have been a misunderstanding between Harry and the Skipper because Damon motored straight out to the Yellowtail mark that we'd fished yesterday. As in fishing the world over,today was a different day. The tide was hardly moving and the Yellowtails had completely disappeared. They tried another spot with no joy and finally ended up fishing beside Mick, Roy and Ross on board Chris's boat where they were soon into some Yellow Tail sport. Harry hooked a monster of the deep but lost it after a short fight. They ended the day with nothing worthy of a photo so I'll show you a couple of regular Key West inhabitants. There used to be hundreds of pelicans in Key West but the hurricanes of a couple of years back decimated the population. They're slowly returning and are very quick to congregate around the fish cleaning tables when the boats get back in the afternoon.

Roy, Mick and Myself were with Chris today. With winds over 20 mph the choices were limited to Tarpon fishing in the harbour or enduring the bumpy ride out to the reef to fish for Yellowtails again. Tarpon fishing hasn't really turned on yet so we settled for the reef. We had with us a photographer, Radomir Krkic from Serbia. He travels all over the world making fishing films for Serbian television and is currently negotiating further coverage throughout the Balkan countries. Things started well enough during the one and a quarter hour run out to the mark and Radomir was soon filming the capture of some Yellowtails and a couple of Black Grouper. However, after about an hour he turned a most peculiar colour and decided to have a sit down, followed by a lie down followed by quite a long spell of death. It was a real relief to see him come back to life once it was time to come home. We had another great day catching lots of Yellowtails and four Black Grouper. Fishing like that makes the long, bumpy journey worthwhile. Here's Roy and Mick with the Black Groupers

Keith and Jim fished with Captain Jack in the harbour, targeting Tarpon. They caught a couple of Tarpon and to everyones surprise they also caught a Permit each. It's very unusual for Permit to be caught in the harbour, so to catch 2 in a day was quite a feat. Jim's fish was one of the biggest that anybody had seen, an amazing capture by somebody on their first trip to Key West.